Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby zenmonkey » Wed Jun 14, 2017 2:20 pm

Systematiker wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote:Seriously?! The one time I open my mouth without thinking, and suddenly the whole forum is learning Czech?! And I never even said I was going to learn Czech!!! I said if there were SLOVAK Star Trek books, I would learn SLOVAK!!!! And now suddenly everyone wants to learn Czech and they want bots and extra Mühe and they want Cavesa to tutor them with a whip. :shock:


Reading this, I'm actually kind of mad that we are doing Czech and not Slovak, because I learned last night I would get bonus pay if I can prove proficiency in Slovak but not Czech (there's a whole list, pretty much nothing where I can pass the test at the required level results in extra pay :( )


Some of us are contrarians and are doing Slovak (someday). ;)
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby daveprine » Wed Jun 14, 2017 3:34 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:Seriously?! The one time I open my mouth without thinking


I find that hard to believe....

Brun Ugle wrote:Next time I'm in a bookstore, I'm keeping my mouth shut!


Also hard to believe. And undesirable. It's much more fun watching you commit to things when you're prone to impulse and tempted by all things Star Trek. Ah, if only you were as impulsive about Star Wars...

...said the guy who, on this most recent trip:
-bought SW: The Force Awakens books in Hungarian and Slovak
-was given SW:TFA DVD with Scandinavian subtitles by a dear friend
-bought the prequels with Slovak, Czech, and Hungarian subtitles
-bought the prequel novelization in German Gotta love Thalia....
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby stelingo » Sat Jun 17, 2017 9:10 pm

daveprine wrote:
Friday I relocate to Hong Kong for 2 months and now Cantonese is on the list. Never bothered to learn a word of it til now. (Even though I had an earlier version of Colloquial Cantonese on my shelf for ages.) I would almost consider hopping on the Czech bandwagon, but I'm trying to focus on specific needs for now. Unless someone finds me a Star Wars book in Czech. (I have a few in Slovak now. Gotta start somewhere...)


The bookshops in Prague are full of Star Wars books in Czech. i never really noticed the Star Trek books. But Star Trek is poo anyway... :D :twisted:
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Cavesa » Sun Jun 18, 2017 1:11 pm

stelingo wrote:
daveprine wrote:
Friday I relocate to Hong Kong for 2 months and now Cantonese is on the list. Never bothered to learn a word of it til now. (Even though I had an earlier version of Colloquial Cantonese on my shelf for ages.) I would almost consider hopping on the Czech bandwagon, but I'm trying to focus on specific needs for now. Unless someone finds me a Star Wars book in Czech. (I have a few in Slovak now. Gotta start somewhere...)


The bookshops in Prague are full of Star Wars books in Czech. i never really noticed the Star Trek books. But Star Trek is poo anyway... :D :twisted:


Of course the Star Trek books are widely available too. It always depends on the bookshop, in many there are neither Star Trek nor Star Wars books, in others there are both. And Star Trek is awesome :-)
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Brun Ugle » Sun Jun 25, 2017 10:12 am

Well, I never really wrote a summary of the Gathering, but some other people did, so go read their logs, because I’m still too lazy. Since then, I haven’t really done so much. I didn’t get bronchitis this time, so that’s good, but I still ended up having one of those periods in which I turn into a zombie and seem to need about 14-16 hours of sleep per day. Needless to say, I haven’t exactly gotten a lot done. There just aren’t enough hours in the day, at least not if you take 3 siestas a day. I might be turning into a cat. :?

Anyway, I’m a little better now, but this weekend is the Steinkjer Musikk Festival, which is nice, but it makes sleeping a little more difficult. At least the weather is pretty nice. It was too hot when I got back from Bratislava, over 20 C! That might not sound hot, but remember, those are Norwegian degrees, so I was melting. Then it dropped down to single digits and now it’s back into the teens. As long as the sun doesn’t come out, it’s pretty comfortable.

The most exciting thing right now is that I’ve decided it’s time to buy an apartment. So now, of course, I’m really stressed out again. I go from thinking I might have found the perfect place and being afraid I won’t be able to get it, to fearing that I will get it and it will turn out not to be what I want at all. It’s really expensive to buy anything in the center of Steinkjer, so it’s kind of scary. I’m the sort of person who can make a dozen trips to the store over several months or even years before buying something that costs just NOK 1000, and apartments cost a wee bit more than that. :shock: :?

Skip to here for actual languagey stuff

Inspired by sfuqua, I’ve decided to try a proper run-through of Glossika. Before, I’ve always tried to do either just GSR files or the classic method with the GMS files, but I’ve always ended up trying to do about four languages at once and quickly given up. This time, I decided to try one of their new schedules and just one language at a time. I’m starting with Spanish, which is my best language of those I’m working on. Even though their Mexican Spanish course is pretty bad and full of mistakes, my Spanish is good enough now, that it isn’t hard for me (so far) and I can recognize the problems and use it anyway. I’m doing the 6 week intense schedule and am currently on day 7. So far, so good. After Spanish, I think I will work on my next best language, German, and then Japanese. I might need a break in between because it is definitely tiresome. I will probably use a different schedule for them as well. Maybe 8 weeks for German and 3 months for Japanese, but I’m not sure yet.

In German, I’m now up to lesson 15 in FSI and I feel like they are finally starting to do the drills right. I hope they continue. Before, the substitution drills usually had the word given in the form you had to use it in in the sentence, but now they give it in the base form, and you have to make the necessary changes yourself. I never understood why they didn’t do that from the beginning.

I haven’t been exactly working on Japanese, but I did find some Doraemon episodes on YouTube and I’ve been watching them. They have subtitles, but I notice that I don’t always need them, so there must be some Japanese still buried deep inside me somewhere. I’m hoping to try rdearman’s Anki/TV method on Japanese, but I haven’t gotten around to figuring it out yet. (I’m kind of waiting for him to post the step-by-step instructions with pictures, because that’s how lazy I am right now.)

I have also been going through the FSI French phonology course so I will be ready when I start French. I’m not in any particular rush, so I’m just taking my time learning the pronunciation at the moment.
I also need to learn the Czech pronunciation before I start actually studying it. I might end up in rdearman’s test group and then I would want to have the basics of pronunciation down first. I only have about a month to learn to make all those sounds, so I should get started. Other than that, I won’t study Czech or French until the study starts, but I consider proper pronunciation too important to hop over.
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Jul 04, 2017 10:47 am

I’m a little late writing this. I’ve just been feeling too lazy. I hate being so tired all the time. I blame summer and that horrible sun. Now at least the clouds have come back and it’s a little more comfortable around here. Still, warmer than the ideal, but at least it’s below 20 again.

There were more musical goings-on in our town this weekend when the NRK Sommertog (NRK Summer Train) came to town and there was a concert by the train station. I wonder if they’ve been making a telenovela this year like they did on the NRK Sommerbåt (Summer boat) that one year. It was the world’s longest drama series at 2 670 km. :lol: I really need to finish watching it. It was pretty good, but I got sidetracked after about 12 episodes and never finished it.

My hunt for an apartment continues, but I wonder if there will even be anything much available this time of year when everyone is on vacation. I went to see three apartments last week. I didn’t like the one I thought I’d like, but ended up kind of liking two I thought I wouldn’t like… but not enough to buy them.

I’m still going strong with Glossika in Spanish. 90 minutes per day is a bit much at times though. And the Mexican Spanish course is terrible. The translation isn’t that great, but it also looks like they never even proofread it at all. Still, I do think it is making some difference in my fluency, at least it feels so. I should really do another tutoring session to see if it’s really helped, but I’m so tired and if it’s hot I have to have the windows open and then it can be too noisy. So, I’ve been a little reluctant to schedule any lessons lately. The sooner I get to move, the better.

One of the best uses of Glossika is as a sleep aid. It’s monotonous and requires a lot of concentration and somehow that combination puts me into a very sleepy state if I’m already a bit drowsy, which I usually am in the afternoons. So, I’ve actually taken a few naps lately, which I’m usually not able to do no matter how sleepy I am. Maybe I should try listening to it at night too. :)

I’ve also borrowed La trilogía de la niebla by Carlos Ruiz Zafón from the library. I’ve read the first book and started the second. It’s a YA series, but it’s still pretty good and kind of spooky. I’m enjoying reading it. Now maybe I’ll finally make some progress on the reading portion of my Super Challenge. I’ve already done a double challenge on Spanish movies. :oops:

I’m struggling to find my path in German. I’m wondering if I should just put FSI aside for now and come back to it when my level is a little higher. I think I need to make myself an overview of the grammar with “green sheets” or something because I keep getting confused. German grammar seems so repetitive. They keep reusing the same bits. So, maybe a good plan for the next few weeks would be to make an overview, finish Duolingo, finish my A1-A2 grammar book and then maybe go back to FSI again.

For Finnish, I’ve started using Yksi, kaksi, kolme which I picked up in Vienna. FSI was a little too much. I’ll need to leave that one for later too, I think. And the same with the rest of Assimil.

Esperanto has been ignored, like usual.

Japanese study still consists of watching Doraemon on Youtube. As with German, I’m struggling to find a good path for Japanese. I’ve started and stopped it so many times that I just don’t know where to go from here.

French and Czech are still just pronunciation work. I was a little disappointed that FSI Czech Basic isn’t to be found, at least not the recordings. There is a FAST course, but I think I’ll need more than that. I had a look at the DLI course as well. I haven’t used DLI for German or Spanish because the courses look kind of confusing. There are heaps of PDF’s and tapes and it’s hard to figure out what order things are meant to go in. However, since there wasn’t as much available for Czech, I decided to have a look at it. I think I figured out where to start, but the problem is, almost none of the drills seem to be on the tapes. So what’s the point then? I don’t know if a bunch of tapes are missing or if the DLI method just does all the drills in the classroom. I did find out by chance though, that my local library has a secret stash of language-learning materials in the back and one of them is Colloquial Czech, so I checked it out to have a look at it before August.

Anyway, it looks like I won’t find any very thorough pronunciation materials for Czech, just a few YouTube videos, but fortunately Czech pronunciation seems pretty easy and straightforward, at least compared to French, which is driving me nuts. I don’t think the French Phonology course is as good as the phonology lessons in the beginning of Spanish Programmatic. For one thing, in the Spanish course, you didn’t even see any written Spanish until about lesson 9. In the French course, they not only show you the written French pretty early, but they expect you to be able to pronounce things based on the written French right away. The first half of each lesson has you repeating after the voice on the tape for the most part, but the second half they want you to read things you’ve never seen or heard before and check against the tape. I’m wrong a lot more often than I’d like. I might do a bit better if I stopped the tape and took a little more time, but still, I think it might be better to spend more time on the pronunciation before seeing the language written at all and definitely before trying to read new material. I’ve started to skip the pure reading exercises because there isn’t anything recorded on the tape to check against.

I haven’t answered rdearman’s e-mail about signing up for the study yet. I’m still trying to decide which languages to do. Really, I wanted to be able to see how the whole thing works first and maybe test it to see how to make the Anki cards from a DVD, but I’m not sure how soon we will have the directions. I have four languages I could do: Japanese, Finnish, Czech and French. I’m not too concerned with how I study any of them at the moment. Spanish and German though, I want to study a little seriously and hopefully make some real progress on this year. I’ve just looked through my DVD’s and I have a bunch of Japanese anime films with Japanese sound, but no Japanese subtitles. I think they might be possible to find online though. My The Big Bang Theory DVD’s have French for all seasons except 1 and 3 and my Star Trek: Voyager DVD’s also have French. So I should be all set for French. I’ll have to look for some stuff for Finnish and Czech. I saw a few things at the library, so it should be possible. I know there some cartoons available with Finnish audio, but it’s kind of random what languages the audio is in, so I’ll probably end up buying something because of the audio track rather than something I actually want to see. With my luck, it’ll probably be Barbie. Czech is a little harder, but they had some things at the library. One of them was Game of Thrones but I’m not sure I want to SRS a bunch of violent deaths into my brain. :shock: Maybe I could find Star Trek: The Next Generation with Czech dubs. That could be fun. I’ll have to have a look and see if I can order it from somewhere. Of course, I’m not sure any of my DVD’s have subtitles that match the audio. I suspect they don’t in most cases. That could be a problem too.
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby DaveBee » Tue Jul 04, 2017 11:03 am

Brun Ugle wrote: I’m not sure any of my DVD’s have subtitles that match the audio. I suspect they don’t in most cases. That could be a problem too.
Where there's both audio and subtitles, it always baffles me that they don't match. The actors had a script, why didn't they just give a copy to the bods making the subtitles?

It often seems that the actors script, and the subtitles, get given to different translators. They're similar in meaning, but use different vocabulary.
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Jul 04, 2017 11:12 am

DaveBee wrote:
Brun Ugle wrote: I’m not sure any of my DVD’s have subtitles that match the audio. I suspect they don’t in most cases. That could be a problem too.
Where there's both audio and subtitles, it always baffles me that they don't match. The actors had a script, why didn't they just give a copy to the bods making the subtitles?

It often seems that the actors script, and the subtitles, get given to different translators. They're similar in meaning, but use different vocabulary.

I think it happens mostly in the case of dubs. Then the subtitles are probably usually a better translation and the dubs are adjusted to fit as closely as possible to the mouth movements of the actors. I suspect also that the translators don't get a script at all but have to translate by listening to the audio. I'm not certain that that is how it is done, but I'm judging by some of the mistakes I've seen in subtitles here in Norway. I feel like they are mistakes made by mishearing and wouldn't have occurred if the translator had seen the script written out. For example, I've seen "breed" and "breathe" confused because Norwegians have trouble with the th sound. I can't imagine anyone making that mistake if they seen the words written out.
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Cavesa » Tue Jul 04, 2017 2:49 pm

Czech Star Trek or Stargate dubs are ok, but avoid Doctor Who or the Big Bang Theory for your own good.
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Re: Brun Ugle makes plans and then ignores them – diary of an easily distracted tortoise 2017 (ES, DE, FI, EO, JA, NO)

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Jul 04, 2017 3:18 pm

Cavesa wrote:Czech Star Trek or Stargate dubs are ok, but avoid Doctor Who or the Big Bang Theory for your own good.

Any suggestions as to where to find Star Trek TNG in Czech?
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